


Un de plus

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Children of Characters, F/M, Geek Love, Geeks, Gen, Multi, Nobody is Dead, Science, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU based on SimplyIrenic’s Daddy!Ferre AU. All the nifty scientific advances Combeferre in canon did not live to see nor live to explain to a precocious daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplyirenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyirenic/gifts).



> Obviously a daddy!Comebferre AU based on this drawing (http://irenydrawsdeadpeople.tumblr.com/post/60902911098/last-night-i-got-pretty-cross-at-a-certain-english) by SimplyIrenic. Since the barricades are, as tenlittlebullets once described it, Victor Hugo’s what-if-1832-was-1848 AU, we’re going to go with that. GUESS WHAT LOUIS-PHILIPPE YOUR REIGN ENDED AFTER ONLY TWO YEARS I’m sure this comes as a surprise to many 19th century historians. (Also I am not saying that Louis-Philippe’s reign kept us from having steampunk airships, but I am implying it.) All descriptions of scientific phenomena are taken from Wikipedia (unless they are taken from the excellent book, Age of Wonder), the line, “I am glad this pleases you,” is from maedhyrs, Pontmercying is from playthatsadtrombone, and I’ll do my best to cite other people’s ideas. Drop me a line if I’ve forgotten anyone! (And thanks, as ever, to Pip for betaing!)

1836

 

Combeferre holds the squalling bundle the midwife gave him. He is in a state of sleepless confusion he hasn’t felt since his Necker days.  Ordinarily he would consult experts in the field, but the midwife has already disappeared with mutterings about afterbirth, Mme Combeferre is understandably exhausted, Combeferre’s parents are still en route from Lyons, Combeferre’s father-in-law has run to tell the rest of the family that he is now a grandfather, and Combeferre’s mother-in-law is with her daughter. In times of great existential confusion, Combeferre is used to turning to Enjolras, but it is now two in the afternoon, and Enjolras and all the rest of the Paris contingent are not expected in Annonay until the evening mail coach.

 

There is only Combeferre, perched awkwardly on the edge of his desk chair, papers scattered before him, and this tiny human he and his wife have somehow produced. Combeferre had of course read and studied and theorized, but the practical reality is so much… more.

 

Faint noises became audible—footsteps, then the door swinging open, then the pleasant sound of French half- sung: Courfeyrac. It is Courfeyrac. Combeferre wants to weep with relief.

 

“Felicitations!” cries Courfeyrac. He is all over dust , still in riding boots, his hair disheveled, and Combeferre has never seen a more welcome sight. “It is lucky Aix-en-Provence is not so far distant, if one is willing to change horses multiple times. How is Alexandrine?”

 

“Asleep.” Combeferre gestures helplessly with… his daughter. His mind skitters madly around this fact. A daughter. He has a daughter. He, Combeferre, has a daughter. His daughter squalls in protest. “She is crying more.”

 

How is that possible?

 

Courfeyrac, now twice over a father himself, laughs. “Combeferre, my dear fellow, I have an easy solution to your problem. You are holding the baby incorrectly.” With all his usual, cheerful tact, Courfeyrac arranges the curve of Combeferre’s right arm, the clasp of his left.

 

“Babies are very forgiving,” says Courfeyrac, tickling the child’s palm with a forefinger. “Whether this is a sign of their closeness to God, or their lack of intelligence I leave up to you philosophers.”

 

“She has stopped crying,” said Combeferre, bewildered.

 

Courfeyrac merely looks his amusement, and says, “Yes, you are holding her correctly, now.  That and she is now curious about my finger. It appears, my dear friend, that you have made another little _philosophe_. I know you will wish Enjolras the godfather, but if I may make a suggestion?”

 

“All your others have worked so far,” replies Combeferre.

 

“Sophie,” says Courfeyrac.

 

Combeferre looks down at the little, squished red face, peering up from the blanket. He is biased, certainly, and that must be taken into account, but Combeferre thinks to himself that little Sophie de Montgolfier Combeferre already has her mother’s bright inquisitive gaze.  

 

He is overwhelmed with pure feeling.

 

With Alexandrine Combeferre, nee de Montgolfier, love had always been a cautious, measured enterprise. Combeferre had been hired to work at the hospital of Annonay, and Alexandrine de Montgolfier had been sent to bring him to the Montgolfier balloon workshop, where someone had fallen from the wicker basket of a hybrid balloon a hundred feet off the ground.  Combeferre had been intrigued when they first met... by the mathematical formulas and precise diagrams in her neat, even hand, rolled out on the long trestle tables of the Montgolfier workshop.

 

Their courtship had progressed with the speed of a glacier, since Combeferre had no idea what he was doing, and Alexandrine could see leaving the de Montgolfier household only as a diminution of liberty.  She was perfectly content to be called upon in the afternoons when Combeferre was not busy, to show him around the balloon workshop, or the more profitable paper mills that made the Canson- de Montgolfier fortune, and to leave it at that. Combeferre had only aroused her passion when asking deeply technical questions about her family’s work.

 

Still, when Combeferre had blurted out, in a panic, “What is your favorite alkali metal?” and Alexandrine said, as if this were a perfectly normal question to ask someone during a dance, “None, those soft metals are unstable, and not of much practical use,” he realized how unpleasant it would be not to be married to Alexandrine de Montgolfier.  It had not been falling in love, as Prouvaire’s poems described it, but it had been a full relaxation into himself, as if now he were Essence of Combeferre, Distilled.

 

This was different. It was overwhelming, this almost blinding surge of feeling that made Combeferre wish to declare Sophie the most perfect human ever created, to take her interest in grabbing Courfeyrac’s finger to be a sign that she will be the first female scientist entombed in the Pantheon, to take her bright gaze as a sign that she will singlehandledly pilot her grandparents’ latest hybrid gas and hot air balloon across the Atlantic. “Sophie from Sophia,” Combeferre finds himself babbling, “Greek, for wisdom. Yes.”

 

He coos, a sound he has never before made, and says, “This is an age of wonder, Sophie, and you are the chief of them.”

 

***

1838

 

Alexandrine’s patience is like Xeno’s paradox, Combeferre observes (and, what’s more, observes multiple times, proving that his hypothesis is correct). She often approaches the limits of her patience but she never arrives at it.

 

“No,” she says, deftly extracting a sheet of paper from Sophie’s grubby hands. “You cannot take papers from Papa’s desk to draw on. This is a star map, Sophie, it is not for you to connect the dots.”

 

Sophie whines in her mishmash of misspoken vowels and lisped consonants. Alexandrine, as her name would suggest, has a facility with language. She listens intently, and says, “Repeat that, Sophie,” as many times as is necessary to unravel the logical contortions of toddler reasoning. It is in moments like this that Combeferre can glimpse the serious, phlegmatic child Alexandrine must have been, lowered up and down repeatedly in the basket of experimental hot air and gas balloons.

 

Sophie unhappily gives up her designs on Combeferre’s star chart.

 

Alexandrine starts to ask Combeferre when he is expected at the hospital, but Sophie interrupts with a brilliant solution: she will take some of the long rolls of paper Alexandrine’s uncle makes specially for Alexandrine’s equations.

 

“No, you may not take Mama’s paper either,” says Alexandrine, sternly. “Mama is translating a difficult chemical paper from English on the study of hydrogen gas. Unless you want grandpere to explode several hundred feet above ground, you will not touch those papers.”

 

Combeferre objects, mildly, “I do not think she has understood the nature of your threat.”

 

“Possibly, but it is an effective one.”

 

Sophie dimly understood that Bad Things would happen to Grandpere if she touched Mama’s papers, and the next time she knocks over a stack of papers while trying to avoid her evening bath, she bursts into tears.

 

Alexandrine looks up from her little barricade of dictionaries and scientific tables in mild exasperation. “Sophie, stop crying, your uncle Cason is a _Manufacture Royale_ of paper. We can get you plenty of paper of your own to scribble on.”

 

After a few minutes, Sophie is persuaded to explain herself between sobs. Alexandrine translates that Sophie thinks her grandpere has now exploded across the sky.

 

“Perhaps that threat was too effective,” muses Alexandrine.

 

Combeferre loves to perform the duties traditionally assigned to mothers: of soothing Sophie after any upsets or injuries, of brushing her hair and tucking her into bed at night, of settling the irrational fears that spring from a two-year-old’s misperceptions of the world.

 

“Come now, grandpere is not in the sky. I’ll show you.” Combeferre scoops Sophie up from the carpet, where she is little more than a puddle of Distraught Toddler and dirty muslin. “Papa has his Hershel telescope all set up. It sees so far, you can see other suns!”

 

Sophie hiccups her acquiesce, and though she really is much too young to understand, Combeferre shows her the binary star system in the constellation of Cygnus. “See, no grandperes,” Combeferre explains, comfortingly. “Just two stars 313.6 mas away from the Earth, according to Bessel’s latest paper.”

 

Combeferre finds himself attempting to explain how Bessel has measured the distance through a parallax, the semi-angle of inclination between two sight-lines to the star, as observed when the earth is on opposite sides of the sun in its orbit, but Sophie’s concerns are more prosaic.

 

“Grandpere is not exploded?”

 

“No,” Combeferre reassures her. “Grandpere is not exploded. We are merely closer to touching the stars.”

 

***

1838

 

Combeferre is more successful teaching Sophie botany than astronomy, but, then again, he has Jehan’s help. Jehan’s love of horticulture has grown more scientific, even as his poems have grown more mystical.

 

“My publisher despairs,” said Jehan, happily. “Saint-Beuve, even, had difficulties, and Heine speaks well of the poems because he is certain he is the only one who understands them— oh no, that’s prickly Sophie!”

 

Combeferre snatches Sophie up before she can tumble into the rosebush Jehan is now cultivating instead of his old pot of violets.  “Come now, Sophie, Jehan is kindly letting us look at a variety of his specimens under a microscope. We must go take a look! This proves cell theory.”

 

Sophie manages to make her excitement understood (to Combeferre, not to Jehan, whose translations are, as ever, wildly creative and not much based on the source text). Combeferre sets up the microscope and puts Sophie in his lap. “The theory goes that all plants are made up of cells. “

 

“All things?” asks Sophie.

 

“You are ahead of the scientific community on that, my dear,” he says, fondly. It does not surprise him at all that his daughter is a genius. (Jehan calls this an indulgent interpretation of a statement, and though Combeferre admits this is a valid critique, it does not mean Sophie is not brilliant). “We are reasonably certain that all plants are made up of cells. We are not sure if all animals are the same as well. Let us look at the rose petal.”

 

“The body politic is made up of cells,” says Jehan. “Revolutionary cells are... hm, here my knowledge of science fails me. But we talk of governments as if they are people, not plants.”

 

“I would not deny that people and plants might be the same on a small enough level.”

 

“To think,” Jehan says dreamily, “you may be the same as a rose, Mlle Combeferre!”

 

This left a deep impression on Sophie. She repeated this fact to herself all the way home.

 

Alexandrine had at first been anxious that moving to Paris meant she would no longer get to spread out rolls of her specially made paper and write out her complex strings of equations estimating gravitational pull and wind resistance, but Combeferre had assured her that his new position at the _Muséum national d'histoire naturelle_ did not mean she had to become a salon hostess. Her father, Jacques-Etienne de Montgolfier, had spent many years in Paris following his successful flights in hot air balloons and added the clincher: moving to Paris meant better access to peer review.

 

Alexandrine happily devotes her Thursday mornings to peer review. When Combeferre and Sophie return home, she is in the dining room with a couple of the friends she had made through scientific salons, arguing over the differences in wind resistance between the Channel and the Atlantic.

 

Combeferre has always been attracted to people who possess a pure and absolute passion for an ideal that may seem impossible to outsiders.  He pauses in the doorway, Sophie balanced against his hip, as Alexandrine interrupts the argument about the Gulf Stream with, “Why now, my two favorite people! Sophie, how was Monsieur Prouvaire?”

 

“I am the same as a rose,” announces Sophie, haughtily.

 

“About the same as ever, then,” says a salon hostess.

 

Combeferre smiles and cannot disagree.

 

***

1842

 

Ever since Enjolras and Courfeyrac, together, managed to get Combeferre appointed to _Muséum national d'histoire naturelle_ , Combeferre accompanies them part of the way to the South in the summer. Along with Mme and Mlle Combeferre, and Mme Indiana de Courfeyrac, the novelist idiosyncratic enough to accept Courfeyrac’s proposal of marriage, they all stop at Bahorel’s farm for a week before going their separate ways: the Combeferres to Annonay, to his wife’s family and their workshops; the de Courfeyracs to Aix-en-Provence, to their children and to Courfeyrac’s constituents; and Enjolras to the Haute-Loire, to his constituents and to the draft of the latest volume of his _Histoire de la Revolution francaise_.

 

Combeferre always looks forward to this summer travel. It reminds him of the early days of their friendship, and they easily exchange the duty of entertaining Sophie who, now six, will go nowhere without her Papa. (Mme Combeferre and Mme de Courfeyrac happily entertain each other in the carriage; they appreciate the opportunity to talk over the difficulties of being women who succeed in fields usually left to men, and are in different enough fields not to feel competitive).

 

Courfeyrac has two daughters of his own and is adept at entertaining Sophie, telling her wild stories, inventing games, teaching her how to imitate the sing-song rise and fall of Occitan. Enjolras, to everyone’s surprise, is just as good. He may be indifferent to women, unlikely to ever marry, but he takes pleasure in the semi-disrespectful back-and-forth he develops with Sophie Combeferre, Marianne and Elise de Courfeyrac, and innumerable Bahorels.

 

It is currently Courfeyrac’s turn, and he has finished wittily summarizing his wife’s first novel, about her father’s years in the "Free Legion of Americans," a group of mixed-race swordsmen led by Alexandre Dumas’s father. Courfeyrac skips Mme de Courferyac’s second novel and expands upon her third. This is Courfeyrac’s favorite novel because the main character is a thinly veiled portrait of himself, and the plot revolves around the 1830 and 1832 revolutions.

 

“Smile all you like at me,” says Courfeyrac, when Sophie is asleep against Combeferre’s chest, drowsing in the saddle, “but that novel won me the last election. The last time I was stumping in Aix-en-Provence several drunken constitutions addressed me not as Gauvain Courfeyrac, or even Gauvain de Courfeyrac, but as Aimery de Fey.”

 

“You have always said the goal of a dandy is to turn himself into a work of art,” says Combeferre, lips twitching. “As a friend, I cannot help but smile at your successes.”

 

Courfeyrac laughs and admits this is true.

 

“I smile because it is good to smile upon tales of heroism and public service,” says Enjolras, simply.

 

“You must always take my nonsense and turn it into something heartfelt,” says Courfeyrac, fondly. “Well! I dare you to be heartfelt about Marius’s latest Pontmercying—his wife was telling Indiana last week—“

 

But there is no opportunity for Courfeyrac to tell what is, admittedly, an hilarious story from the baroness Pontmercy. Bahorel’s eldest son has spotted them and gallops towards them, whooping so loudly that Combeferre is moved to make a joke about the Doppler effect.

 

“What?” asks Courfeyrac.

 

Combeferre launches into an enthusiastic and highly technical explanation.

 

“I am glad this pleases you,” says Enjolras.

 

“I’ll show you,” Combeferre promises.

 

He does so later that evening, when traditionally, they are supposed to have port and cigars. Courfeyrac smokes a cigarette, but takes no wine, lamenting that his student days are over and he can no longer eat and drink all he wishes without bursting out of his waistcoats. Enjolras neither drinks nor smokes, though he would gladly have sat for hours while his friends amused themselves with both. Bahorel is in a boisterous mood, now that he owns the family farm and vineyard and refuses to eat or drink anything he has not grown himself (his annoyed wife soon stops ordering coffee as a result, and Bahorel easily and readily admits his fault). Combeferre thinks of taking a glass of port, but before he reaches for a glass, the nursemaid informs him that Sophie will not get ready for bed without saying goodnight to her Papa.

 

“Bring her down,” exclaims Bahorel, as full of largesse as ever.

 

Sophie is shy at being alone in the dining room alone with her father and his friends, but uncle Enjolras, in his quiet, smiling way, sets himself to reassure her. Sophie crawls onto Enjolras’s lap and puts her arms around his neck, but hides her face in his cravat.

 

“Say,” Courfeyrac interjects, “what was that joke you were making earlier, about, er, dropping?”

 

“Doppler,” explains Combeferre. “It is the change in frequency of a wave (or other periodic event) for an observer moving relative to its source. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from an observer. Compared to the emitted frequency, the received frequency is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower during the recession.”

 

“In layman’s terms,” prompts Bahorel.

 

“It’s like how… it’s easier to show you.”

 

Bahorel scoops up Sophie from Enjolras’s lap. “Ask your Papa where we’re headed.”

 

“Where are we headed?” asks Sophie. Curiosity has driven out her fear, as ever. Combeferre smiles his thanks at Courfeyrac.

 

“The garden,” says Combeferre.

 

The ladies assembled in the drawing room hear a noise at first high and then low, and then high and then low again. They open the French windows to see Enjolras and Courfeyrac sitting on the terrace, respectively smiling and laughing, and Combeferre standing patiently before them, recording something in a notebook.

 

“Where is our host?” asks Mme de Courfeyrac, counting heads.

 

The odd sound approaches them. Bahorel appears to be emitting it, though Mme Combeferre graciously insists that Sophie is the one making odd noises.

 

“No, it’s my husband. You needn’t make excuses.” Rosalie is unphased. She has known Bahorel too long, and saves her energy for more meaningful fights (i.e. the one with her mother-in-law, who views Rosalie with the deep suspicion of the peasant for the city worker). “Don’t trample your mother’s hydrangeas,” she says, as Bahorel runs back and forth, Sophie balanced precariously on his shoulders, making a sound that Mme de Courfeyrac records in her diary as “NEEEEEEEEEEEEER.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Bastille Day! (And many thanks to pilferingapples, who saved me from the consequences of my own poor planning!)

1845

 

When telegraph wires have been laid down throughout Paris, Combeferre sends delighted telegrams to everyone he can think of-- partly because Combeferre brought Morse to the National Assembly to plead for governmental funding, and partly because it's _fun_.

 

It is in this way that Combeferre discovers that Enjolras is rarely to be found at his own lodgings after work hours. If Enjolras is not dining with the Combeferres, he is dining with the de Courfeyracs. If he is dining with neither, he is generally not dining at all—that is to say, he is in his office, revising bills or chapters of his  _Histoire_ . (Occasionally he will dine out with Feuilly, or with other members of his party, or with Joly or Jehan, on the rare occasions when Jehan or Joly hold formal dinners, instead of dining on trays before dashing off to the next poem or patient awaiting them). Courfeyrac has to work on Enjolras for weeks whenever Enjolras’s presence is necessary at a ball or a party.

 

It is not that he does not enjoy the company of his friends, Enjolras once explains, it is that he knows himself unsuited to leisure and drinking, and would not have the joy of his friends diminished with his own, more somber mien.

 

 

(Courfeyrac also once confides in Combeferre, “It is also that people won’t leave him alone at parties. Poor fellow! He is made uncomfortable to the point of coldness. Enjolras was not made to be a husband as you or I, friend Combeferre. ”

 

“No,” says Combeferre, “he never has been. But he needs only his friendships to be fulfilled.”

 

“Yes, but I think only his friends can understand that.”)

 

But, when Combeferre delightedly sends Enjolras five telegraphs that the first steerable hybrid balloon is to be launched from Calais, he receives the following from Enjolras’s office:

 

I AM GLAD THIS PLEASES YOU STOP I WILL BE IN CALAIS STOP

 

Then, from Enjolras’s ever patient secretary:

 

WHO WILL ATTEND STOP WILL PRESIDENT LAMARTINE BE BACK FROM ITALY BY THEN STOP WILL M ENJOLRAS NEED A SPEECH STOP

It dawns on Combeferre that he and Alexandrine would have to plan a launch party. The thought is so alarming to him he immediately tells Feuilly, who has been Combeferre’s _Johans factorum_ since Combeferre has taken over the division of public lectures. Feuilly returns Combeferre’s look of sudden panic. Though Feuilly is as interested in everything as Combeferre is, moments of painful class-consciousness will sometimes undercut Feuilly’s general ability. Feuilly often says, “I am not ashamed to have been a fan painter before ’32,” but people try to make him believe otherwise.

(Those people are never invited back to lecture, but still, Combeferre sees how Feuilly presses his lips together for days afterwards, as if feeling the pull of a scar, imperfectly healed).

Feuilly and Combeferre half-start sentences and then let their fragmented clauses die unfinished. Feuilly has not been to very many parties, and he was uncomfortable at nearly all the ones he has attended. Combeferre is not very good at parties, unless they are the informal ones Courfeyrac crafts with Enjolras and the Combeferres in mind. In large crowds Combeferre begins vaguely to feel that he is not really a person, and that everyone around him can tell. (He mentioned this to Alexandrine once, and she said, “Of course not, you’re not a person, you’re a scientist!”)

Feuilly hits upon a brilliant idea: “Have you talked to Madame Combeferre?”

The telegram they receive back reads merely:

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN

It is not very reassuring.

“Is there anyone else?” asks Feuilly.

“Courfeyrac plans her guest list and dinner menu for her, when we have formal dinners,” says Combeferre. “He is good at that sort of thing. It scarcely takes him half-an-hour.”

“There you go,” says Feuilly. “Courfeyrac’s giving a speech at the Louvre. I’ll cancel your eleven-thirty meeting.”

Courfeyrac is gunning to be Minister of Culture before he is forty and is often giving speeches about the importance of the arts. He is nearing the end of his speech when Combeferre arrives.  Enjolras is in attendance and is delighted to see Combeferre sneaking into the back, as Courfeyrac quotes Saint- Just: “Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters. But, with one of our best poets as president, we hope to change that!”

“Friend Combeferre,” says Enjolras, with the warm smile he reserves for Combeferre alone, “I had though you too busy to attend.”

“Feuilly canceled my meeting,” whispers Combeferre. He notices that Enjolras has saved him a seat in the back anyways. Joly, on Enjolras’s other side, waves delightedly. Combeferre and Joly do not see each other as often as they could wish. Combeferre is no longer practicing medicine, and Joly is. They no longer have the strange schedule of hospital rounds to bind them.

Enjolras’s smile stiffens, suddenly; it loses that concentrated quality that both flatters and unnerves people. Enjolras pulls back behind the polite reserve he has developed as a shield against the world. Combeferre takes his seat and glances over his shoulder. Grantaire is lounging against the wall, looking very tan, but as unkempt as ever.

 

Joly whispers, “I hadn’t known he was back from Tahiti! I mean, he’s written Bossuet to say he’d had several canvases accepted for display in the Salon, but I didn’t think he’d accompany them.”

Enjolras’s attention is on Courfeyrac again, and he interrupts Joly’s whispered updates to lead the applause for Courfeyrac’s speech. It takes them a few minutes to get to the crowds around Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac has the sort of charisma that draws everyone to him; he is an excellent politician.

“Combeferre!” Courfeyrac exclaims delightedly, taking Combeferre’s hands in his own. “I thought you couldn’t attend!”

“Feuilly canceled a meeting—and I’m afraid I need a favor.”

“You need only ask.”

Combeferre pours out the jumbled points of his story, Courfeyrac frequently interrupting to tease out all the details of Combeferre’s request. However, Combeferre can tell the exact moment Courfeyrac sees Grantaire is present.

Courfeyrac has never been good at hiding his emotions. Just as he had laughed and promised Combeferre to do all that was necessary, his delight and good humor clear, now Courfeyrac’s smile vanishes, his expression clouds, and he holds himself in almost unnatural stillness.

Grantaire had not left on the best terms with anyone except Bossuet. Grantaire had been drunk on the barricade (a foolish thing when there were so many sharp and explosive objects about) and slept through the second two days of the revolution. The new Prime Minister had died of cholera, no other politician would accept the post, the people had stormed the Tuileries, and Louis-Philippe had fled to England, but Grantaire had not risen from his table.

Then, Grantaire had shown up drunk to Courfeyrac’s engagement party. Joly and Bossuet had attempted to wrangle him, and had not realized advising Grantaire to drink some coffee to sober up could backfire.

Indiana had been pouring coffee. Grantaire put his hand on her knee, unaware he was talking to the future Mme de Courfeyrac, and accosted her in his usual manner.

“Let me pour you some coffee,” said Indiana, before emptying the pot over Grantaire’s hand.

She had ruined her dress, but Grantaire had very quickly removed his hand from her person.

Courfeyrac had to be talked down from demanding Grantaire to name his seconds (Combeferre and Jehan took that task upon themselves). It fell to Joly and Bossuet to usher out Grantaire and drive home how badly he had shown himself up. Enjolras, oddly enough, took it upon himself to help settle Indiana’s nerves.

Combeferre had expressed his surprise as they walked home that evening.

“You were right,” said Enjolras, simply, “when you chided me for not thinking of women as citizens. I am attempting to correct this.” Then, when pressed a little more, Enjolras added, “I have known similar unpleasantness from Grantaire.”

He did not care to elaborate, and Combeferre did not care to press him.

Indiana de Courfeyrac had contented herself with saying to Combeferre, the next day, “I see why you and Gauvain are so attached to Monsieur Enjolras! He has a way about him—makes you feel as if all the terrible things in the world can be corrected, and that any wrong done to you can be righted.”

Joly notices Courfeyrac’s sudden distraction and says, soothingly, “He is not a bad fellow, Courfeyrac. Just unhappy.”

“Mm.”

Enjolras touches the inside of Courfeyrac’s wrist. Courfeyrac looks to Enjolras. Enjolras, in turn, looks to Combeferre.

“That is true,” says Combeferre, slowly, “but the liberty of one citizen begins where another’s ends. Even if you are unhappy, this gives you no right to injure others. But everything changes. People can learn from mistakes. Perhaps….”

Bossuet, now on his third or fourth law firm (all the others have gone bankrupt or been disbanded soon after he joins them), comes over and remarks, “A funeral group stands before me! I am called upon to comment on it, or I would lose my nickname. What… ah.” Grantaire has spotted them and approaches; Bossuet greets him with enthusiasm and tries to head him off. Yet, a quarter of an hour later, when Combeferre, Courfeyrac and Enjolras have determined President Lamartine will, indeed, be in Italy, and are in deep discussion as to what Enjolras’s speech should be, Bossuet brings Grantaire to them. Joly trails along helplessly, making faces and gesturing as if to say, ‘I tried!’

“Ah,” says Courfeyrac, stiffly.

“Hello,” says Combeferre, awkwardly. “I, ah. Hello.”

Enjolras says nothing.

Grantaire is tanner and thinner; the misery which once clung to him, as potent as wine fumes, has been burnt away under the hot Tahiatian sun. He looks around their circle and begins to ramble. Combeferre sifts through classical allusions and then leans over to Enjolras. He thinks he understands the point Grantaire dances around, but then a waiter approaches them with a tray of champagne.

Enjolras shakes his head, as ever. Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet and Combeferre all take glasses, hoping the champagne bubbles will cushion the inevitable explosion. The waiter turns to Grantaire. Grantaire hesitates, and then says, “No. Thank you.”

“He no longer drinks,” Combeferre says, in Enjolras’s ear.

He sees Enjolras’s usual optimism rise to the fore.  Enjolras is cautious but tries to connect—a metaphorical hand held out in such a way that Grantaire could still reject it—by saying, “It has been nearly ten years since we saw you last.”

“I wished to warm my hands on the fires of your enthusiasm, like in the old days,” says Grantaire, easily. He holds out his hand. There is a faint scar from a burn on Grantaire’s left hand. Courfeyrac eyes it, and is, for perhaps the first time, unwilling to take Enjolras’s lead. “Like Icarus, I flew too close and burned myself—”

Courfeyrac cuts in, with the annoyance that always bursts out of him whenever Grantaire is flippant while Courfeyrac is being serious: “No, you insulted my wife, and she dumped a pot of coffee on your hand.”

“That is the less artistic way of phrasing it,” Grantaire begins, but he can see that he has already lost Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac who has always been and still is, the bright, lively center of their group, Courfeyrac, who brought in Marius, the savior of their barricade, Courfeyrac, now the unofficial whip for Enjolras’s party. Grantaire says, imploringly, “It is the truthful way. A single mistake—”

“Indiana has gone her entire life with men, otherwise “good” men, as they would call themselves, making assumptions and insinuations about her based on her complexion. Single mistakes to them, have become a recurring pattern for her.”

“I was blind as a Sybil, friend Courfeyrac, I promise you that. Her color had nothing to do with it—“

“That hardly makes it better!”

“An olive branch, friend Courfeyrac—is the excuse the bacchantes did to the cities they destroyed. When the God was upon them, they did not know the damage they caused. I do not….” He gestures, vaguely. “You may call me Pentheus, for _pénthe_ —“ grief, in Greek “—have I caused. I observed rites not meant for me—”

“No,” interrupted Courfeyrac. “You still don’t understand. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t understand why we were willing to die in ’30 or in ’32. That is—no, never mind, it does, because the same principle caused me to throw myself into the breach and to throw you out of my house. The liberty of one citizen ends where another’s begins.”

“ _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_ ,” says Grantaire, and he is almost serious. He says, in a more subdued tone, “The god of wine and revelry takes on the appearance of a bull, destroying all about him indiscriminately, he causes his devotees to destroy those they love. I worship no longer at Dionysus’s shrine.”

Joly and Bossuet look at each other in shock.

Combeferre and Enjolras need only to look at each other to know what the other thinks. Enjolras touches the inside of Courfeyrac’s right wrist, Combeferre presses his shoulder to Courfeyrac’s left shoulder. The tension leaks out of Courfeyrac’s shoulders, but he is still wary.

Grantaire continues, “I have turned from him, abandoned the vine and the fennel stalk. His worship does not heal one’s illness. I bow only now to Apollo.”

Enjolras’s expression is once again distant. Combeferre hopes, rather than believes that Grantaire is referring to his tan, or to Apollo’s status as the god of art.

“Self-medication,” is Joly’s murmured guess. “It never quite heals what ails you.”

Courfeyrac relents a little and says, “I had wondered… but no matter. I have no right—it is Indiana whom you have offended. I cannot guarantee she will wish to speak with you.”

Courfeyrac grudgingly writes out an invitation to the balloon launch for Grantaire. Indiana is not pleased, and only comes when Enjolras quietly offers to stay with her through the party. Alexandrine takes Indiana’s side and indeed, sticks by her side when she is not needed by the balloon.

Enjolras stays by them, a silent, golden guardian. His goddaughters, Marianne de Courfeyrac, and Sophie Combeferre, have picked out his outfit for him—instead of the worn, fraying black suit he usually, absent-mindedly dons each morning, they have forced him into a golden waistcoat and white trousers. His red coat he sacrifices early on, so Sophie and Marianne can sit on the sand more comfortably. It suits him to go about in rolled up shirtsleeves, his cravat loose and negligently tied. In the bright sunlight everyone is squinting; it is impossible to see the laugh lines around Enjolras’s eyes, the white that has begun to creep into his golden hair. He looks twenty again, capable of anything.

Grantaire, of course, notices this and seems to be sketching.

“I wish he wouldn’t,” mutters Indiana. Enjolras inclines his golden head, but says nothing. He does not often concern himself with his own comfort. She continues on, “Still, Louis-Antoine, I wish you would not put yourself up as some sacrificial lamb. I am glad he is not bothering me, but I cannot be content if he is bothering you.”

Enjolras says nothing, but Combeferre knows what the tilt of Enjolras’s head means, the pause in building Marianne’s requested sand barricade, the faint look of resignation. Though Enjolras would never say it, and perhaps never even allow it to rise to the level of conscious thought, Combeferre hears: ‘At least it is admiration from a distance. I may concern myself with my godchildren.’

But that is all the attention Combeferre pays to The Problem of Grantaire. Combeferre is too busy with the balloon.

They have planned this launch with exacting detail, but things still go wrong. The balloon’s decorations smudge during the journey from Annonay to Calais. Feuilly rushes in with a brush and a can of black paint to redraw the ‘M’ in ‘Montgolfier.’ The pilot becomes faint with panic and Joly has to borrow a black medical bag. Something is off in the steam- engine that powers the balloon. Combeferre’s father-in-law locates the problem easily enough: the engine had been banged about in transport, and some of the gears are out of their grooves. Alexandrine casts off her crinoline in a justifiable fit of temper and clambers into the basket herself to readjust the gears, as Bahorel and a constantly fluctuating number of sons move aside or hold up the bits of machinery Alexandrine has either fixed or deemed acceptable. To Combeferre falls the task of double-checking Alexandrine’s adjustments, and to Bossuet and Courfeyrac, the task of entertaining and distracting the crowd. This is easily accomplished when they think to ask Jehan to memorialize the day with an extempore sonnet. The baroness Pontmercy happily agreed to be the general hostess and herds people from place to place, flitting here and there and everywhere, in perpetual, useful motion.  

By the time Enjolras, still disheveled, comes forward to give his speech, Combeferre is consumed with the fear that this might not work. Alexandrine, ever an engineer instead of a theorist, does not automatically think of what will happen if this launch fails, does not think of the set-back in funding, in innovation, in the ability of the scientific community to leap. Balloon research was set back for years when the most famous French pilot, Rozier, died in a crash in 1785. It is perhaps better to be in Alexandrine's head than Combeferre's. She sees only gears to be fixed, fuel to be loaded, gasses to be measured, tools to be accounted for.

But the hymn-like cadence of Enjolras’s voice penetrates past all of Combeferre’s panicked thoughts. Science, Enjolras is saying, his voice carrying over the crowd, too, has its revolutions. It is not merely a system of gathered facts, it is a method of interpretation based on those facts. It is then innovation based on those interpretations. It is Progress.

Though it is not the main gist of the speech, Combeferre is relieved when Enjolras says, “Even in failure there is value. We test and we learn and we improve. If something does not work, we find something better. That is the human condition—or, rather, how it should be.”

Despite their fears, the balloon rises. The pilot has no trouble steering the ship over the Channel. They all stand and watch as the balloon disappears from sight. Alexandrine’s hand is tightly clasped in Combeferre’s own.

They are nervous and distracted that evening. The de Montgolfiers have rented the hotel closest to the beach, and take turns pretending to want to walk on the beach for no reason, no reason at all. Combeferre’s father-in-law parks himself by the Calais semaphore tower. Most of the de Montgolfiers are drunk, and the ones that are not drunk are nervous. Combeferre secludes himself in a private parlor with his friends.

Bahorel volunteers to entertain the children. (There is a great deal of property damage involved, and he is later banned for life from the hotel.) Jehan writes down his sonnet, Bossuet and Joly crack jokes, Courfeyrac tries to distract them all with a debate over whether or not Lamartine should expect to be entombed in the Pantheon, but only Feuilly will seriously engage him in argument. Combeferre sits and worries. Alexandrine paces. She accepts a cigarette from Courfeyrac, and then eventually accepts Indiana’s offer to go walk along the beach with a pair of binoculars.  Before they can leave, the waiter appears with a telegram and a large envelope.

“Where is the telegram from?” demands Combeferre, eagerly. In his excitement, he forgets they have not yet built a telegraph wire across the Channel.

“It is addressed to me,” says Indiana, bewildered. “From… oh.”

It is from Grantaire.

She presses her hip against the back of Courfeyrac’s chair. He tilts his head back and looks up at her. Indiana pets his chestnut hair as if absent-mindedly petting a cat. She says, at last, “I cannot forgive, but I can understand.” She gives the telegram to Alexandrine first.

Alexandrine scans it and says, “Hm! It is astonishing what gases and liquids do to the human body. No wonder Humphry Davy tried to replace wine with nitrous oxide.”

“Who is the envelope addressed to?” asks Indiana.

“No one,” says Bossuet, peering at it.  

Jehan opens it. He says, a little surprised, “It is a sketch!”

“It is all of us,” says Enjolras, relieved.

Combeferre had half-expected this second picture to be an uncomfortably worked one of Enjolras. A quick glance around the room reveals that everyone else had suspected it too. Jehan seeks to reassure everyone: “It’s all of us in the back room.”

“What?” asks Feuilly.

“The back room of the Musain!” Jehan points to it. “You know, the Musain! It’s been gone for years.”

It is at that moment that Bahorel and the children invade, and Combeferre takes delight in showing Sophie his old haunt. “Papa used to spend a great deal of time in that back room,” says Combeferre, fondly. It is a double pleasure, to see, in a series of tangled lines, the faces of all his friends, as dreamy or as bold as they stand in Combeferre’s memory, and then to look up and see the faces of all the friends around them. Time has not dimmed their essential qualities; indeed, it seems to have strengthened them.

Bahorel picks up the sketch. “Well now! I cannot remember being that trim.”

“Nor can I,” says Rosalie, from where she and Musichetta are playing a round of piquet with the Pontmercys.

Jehan says, “Look, there’s more paper in the envelope.”

It is another sketch, this time, of them on the beach. There are other figures, too, their faces indistinct. Combeferre studies the two compositions and realizes the theme holding them together. In each, they are working towards a larger goal. Each of them, according to their skills, all of them, according to their ability—trying to make the world better. In the picture with the balloon they are literally all working to uplift their fellow man. And, in each sketch, in the bottom, right-hand corner, there is a crooked ‘R.’

And, oddly enough, it is Grantaire that brings Alexandrine the news she seeks. Grantaire’s habits have all been altered by his time out of a bottle and in the sun. He is up with the dawn most days, and he is the first to see a speck on the horizon. He throws pebbles at Combeferre’s window.

Combeferre peers out blearily and sees only shades of beige and white and blue, and a dark smudge against them all. “Where are my glasses?”

Alexandrine, head buried under her pillow, throws Combeferre’s glasses in his general direction. Combeferre puts them on and regains a sense of line and detail. Grantaire is on the beach, hallo-ing and waving and pointing. Combeferre squints into the horizon.

“Rosy fingered dawn pushes something back to you!” Grantaire calls. “Friend Combeferre, you have trapped Aeolus indeed!”

Combeferre spots it and shakes Alexandrine’s shoulder. “It’s back!”

Alexandrine bolts out of bed. She scrambles into Combeferre’s spare coat and  trousers instead of her gown, to save time, and runs down the beach. The steerable hybrid balloon sails on towards them, gaining shape, first, then color, then words.

“Montgolfier!” comes a cry from up and down the beach.  

“We did it!” shouts Alexandrine. “I can see it-- Montgolfier! I see it!” Combeferre kisses her until Sophie wakes up and protests that it is disgusting to see her parents carrying on like this. Alexandrine tickles her mercilessly in punishment. Combeferre is overwhelmed with happiness. He is surrounded by all those he cares for, uplifted by their own joy. He makes a point to seek out Grantaire.

Grantaire is sitting with Bossuet, talking nonsense and skipping stones across a tide pool.

“Friend Combeferre,” says Grantaire. “Come to join us?”

“You didn’t draw yourself in the sketches,” says Combeferre. “Why, my friend?” He says ‘ _ami_ ’ deliberately.

Grantaire stoops to examine a flat stone. He does not answer.

Bossuet says, “I feel speeches are called for, about progress and suchlike, but alas for you, I can give only funeral orations. There was a time, you all recall, that we thought we should be entering into a tomb, all flooded with the dawn—but how much more pleasant is it to awake and see one, with the world’s first steerable hybrid balloon in the middle of it?”

“It was an act of love,” says Grantaire, abruptly.

Bossuet glances at Combeferre, with a raised eyebrow, as if to inquire, ‘Has friend Grantaire fallen into old habits?’ But Combeferre understands. He puts a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder.

“Yes, it was,” says Combeferre. “Revolution is the profoundest act of love.”

“No greater love is this, that a man lays down his life for his friends,” quips Bossuet. He deliberately uses the word ‘ _ami_ ,’ as Combeferre did. Bossuet has a clever mind; he picks up on truth Grantaire has spent far too long trying to find. “And we were the friends of the ABC—the _abaissé_. To lay down our lives for the oppressed—“

Grantaire says, “All in all, my eagle, I am glad you never had to give your own funeral oration.” He selects a stone and weighs it in his palm. “I was an unhappy fellow, friend Lesgles, friend Combeferre. I still am, in some respects, only I have learned not to preserve my injuries in brandy. I used to wish that your faith—your loves—would uplift me.”

That, thinks Combeferre, is why Grantaire used to stare at Enjolras. There were baser wishes too, ones that Enjolras neither understood nor welcomed, but there it is, spread open, like a corpse on the operating table of the Hotel-Dieu. Combeferre puts a hand to Grantaire’s elbow and lifts him up.

“Come,” says Combeferre. “You can see the balloon now.”

They have been spread out, flung themselves into different professions, bound themselves to different people, but they all look up and into the dawn, and Combeferre thinks, ‘in essentials, we shall not alter; we shall only become more.’


End file.
